Ragin’ in the rainforest with squirrels, skiffle and Siberians

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

I can think of worse ways to spend a weekend than the one I had in Kuching.

For example, you could have been stuck in a freezing ballroom listening to some speaker drone on and on about the bleeding obvious (yes, there are events held over the weekend these days) or you could have been busy fielding conference calls from colleagues around the world who think the world revolves around their time zones and work schedules.
Or you could, like me, be sitting on a rattan mat on ground that reminds you what earth should really smell like, gazing up to the night sky and seeing rainforest trees lit up by the stars and soft lighting and listening to artistes from all around the world send their musical notes up to the heavens and, every now and then, spotting a flying squirrel up in the trees.

After seven years away, I was back at the Rainforest World Music Festival in Kuching, Sarawak and my, how it’s grown since the first event 10 years ago.

Then it attracted merely a handful of interested locals and expatriates, today thousands of people come from all over the world to celebrate music and nature.

“You can see the attraction,” said one Singapore travel agent who had been invited to experience the event to see if he could sell it to his customers. “It’s for the young who just want to party, families, old people and ageing hippies.”

He said the last bit without looking at me, I swear.

So anyway, there we all were – young, old and ageing – about 20,000 strong on Saturday night, I was told, at the festival, listening to one of the most eclectic collection of musicians I had ever heard assembled in one place over three nights.

It was at this event seven years ago that I first heard the nose flute, played by the Orang Ulu tribe of Sarawak. I never imagined the nose could produce such beautiful music till I met the old man who played it.

It was also then I learnt more about the sape, the two-string guitar-like instrument played by the Orang Ulu of Sarawak, at one of the workshops. When you hear it, you think of flowing rivers and singing birds.

This time, I heard Jerry Kamit play electric sape. He plays it like I imagine Jimi Hendrix might – sape sexed up for the modern times.

I also learnt something new about my own country when I saw the group, Mah Meri perform their rituals on stage. Most Malaysians know Carey Island, near Selangor, for the great seafood (as you would expect), but few of us know that on that island still live about 1,600 of these Orang Asli who still live by their traditions and produce the best wooden carvings in Malaysia.

Some of their sculptures take years to complete.
Before they began their performance, they asked the crowd for a one-minute silence so they could commune with the spirits.

“I was so pleased when the crowd actually went silent because if they hadn’t, they might have walked off stage. That’s how adamant they are about their beliefs,” said their manager later at a press conference.

The thing about world music is that it embraces, well, the world. So I heard three English lads from Hull (Doghouse Skiffle Group) play what sounded like American folk music with guitar, tea chest and the washboard and the half-Spanish, half-Welsh Rikki-Thomas Martinez who fronts Mas Y Mas perform their brand of Latino-Flamenco and Afro-Cuban music.

Then there was Black Umfolosi from Zimbabwe who had the crowd going with their singing and their war dances and a favourite of the festival, Tarika Be from Madagascar – a babe with attitude; think Tina Turner goes back to roots.

But the men who stole my breath away were four musicians from Tuva, Siberia. Dressed in glorious costumes reminiscent of the south Siberian grasslands where they come from, they played instruments with strange names and sang in a way that resonated in my soul.

The booklet I had told me their instruments were the igil (a Tuvan horsehead cello), khomus (mouth harp), doshpuluur (Tuvan banjo) and the tungur (shaman drum).

But it was their singing which captivated me. Called throat singing or overtone singing, this technique produces sounds that echo the soundscape of their grasslands.

So one minute you could be listening to something similar to the drone of a bagpipe and the next the whistle of a bird, the syncopated rhythms of a mountain stream or the lilt of a cantering horse.

Mix the sounds of Huun Huur Tu with the world beat of Russian group, Malerija, and what you have is a humming, hypnotic, electronic beat that just vibrates right through you.

And by then, everyone – young, old, families and ageing hippies – was up on their feet, communing with music and nature. The flying squirrel however was nowhere to be seen.

Catch up with Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Café – http://www.thetransitcafe.com/